social data

This week I had the fantastic experience of attending the 2016 BigBoulder conference, thanks to the largesse of our partners over at GNIP. This was my first time attending the conference and the Big Boulder Initiative deserves a round of applause for the great job they did. Boulder’s best hotel, the St. Julien, was a gracious host, the food and drinks catered to a variety of tastes, the talks covered a wide range of pertinent issues in the social data world, and of course informing it all was the vibe of Boulder — even though I have lived here for twenty years, I still can’t get over how spectacular a venue it is. And if that wasn’t enough, the Dalai Llama was also staying at the St. Julien. Talk about a vibrational charge!

The BBI has already blogged about the talks in some detail so I won’t rehash a job well done; rather, I would like to share a list of thoughts, observations, and “things overheard” (without “last person” attribution). I have kept the list short, but truth be told, the conference generated a whole host of thoughts and ideas. So, without further ado:

Dogs are people, too.

Brad (a real guy) does a better job than Radian Six at measuring sentiment. No one should tell Salesforce that.

A lot of folks are watching Mr. Robot. Is life imitating art?

If not art, then life often imitates (or is shaped by) Twitter — at least during political crises.

Pictures can tell a story — if we can see them.

Empathy — in design and presentation— will be a key element.

There are multiple truths.

We have miles to go before we sleep.

Bots are the future. But they still need Brad.

Algorithms are biased.

Now what?

Here are a couple of suggestions for the BBI for next year (assuming unlimited time and budget):

It would be great to have a meeting planner capability where attendees are able to schedule meetings with other attendees prior to the conference. That may have been available and I was not aware of it.

How about some workshops for brainstorming specific problems?

What about a start-up competition? Start-ups would get ten minutes on the stage to make their presentation. Attendees could vote on the winner.